A Business Built on Relationships, Reputation, and Community
For nearly five decades, a local accounting firm has grown through changing names, changing technology and changing generations, while holding tightly to the values that mattered from the beginning.
If you spend any time with Billy Hughes and Rob Basye, it doesn’t take long to realize that the story of Hughes & Basye is about much more than accounting. Yes, there are tax returns, financial statements, and decades of numbers behind them, but the foundation of the business has always been people—clients who became friends, employees who became family, and a Northern Neck community both men are grateful to call home.
Billy Hughes’ roots here go back to the very beginning. He was born at home near Bethany Church and moved to Village when he was five. After graduating from Northumberland High School, he attended the University of Richmond and began his career with the accounting firm Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. in Richmond. He spent his first years auditing large companies before moving into tax work, but it didn’t take long for the Northern Neck to begin calling him home.
While visiting one weekend in 1975, Hughes ran into John Shackelford, a former high school classmate whose father, Bill Shackelford, was a local CPA. John asked Hughes if he had ever considered moving back to the Northern Neck to practice accounting. His father was nearing retirement age and hoped to find someone who could eventually take over the practice.
Hughes’ response was immediate: “When can I talk to him?”
By that August, he was back home.
What Hughes could not have known was how quickly he would be asked to grow into the role. About a year later, while attending a tax conference in Virginia Beach with Shackelford, Hughes noticed his boss rubbing his chest and sweating heavily. Realizing something was seriously wrong, he began trying to get him to a hospital. What followed was a harrowing drive in heavy rain and an ambulance ride for Shackelford, who had suffered a major heart event.
Not long afterward, another senior member of the firm experienced heart trouble as well. Suddenly Hughes, still only 25 years old, found himself responsible for three offices and 16 employees.
“It’s called growing up in a hurry,” he said.
He did exactly that, relying not only on what he had learned in school and in Richmond, but also on the wisdom of the businessmen around him. Many of his early clients had built highly successful companies with little formal education, and Hughes quickly understood that his job wasn’t always to be the smartest person in the room.
“Somebody who built a multi–million dollar company back then doesn’t need your advice. You need to listen and learn from them.”
That willingness to listen became part of the way Hughes practiced accounting and eventually the culture of the firm itself.
Over the next several years, the business evolved through partnerships and name changes before becoming Hughes & Associates. Then, in the late 1980s, another Northern Neck native entered the picture.
Rob Basye grew up in Lottsburg, although technically, he jokes, his arrival into the world happened before his family quite made it to the hospital—he was born in the back seat of a car on the Tappahannock Bridge.
His connection with Hughes began while Basye was still a student at Northumberland High School. His mother did simple tax returns for employees where she worked and occasionally let her son help. He found himself intrigued by the process and enrolled in an accounting class. When teacher Betty Christopher invited Hughes to speak to the class during a career day, Basye began thinking seriously about becoming a CPA.
After one year at Randolph-Macon College, he transferred to the University of Richmond so he could take the courses required to sit for the CPA exam (the same university Hughes had attended years earlier). Basye worked for Hughes during two summers of college, and when he graduated in 1987, Hughes offered him a full-time position.
Basye had other opportunities, including higher-paying offers in Richmond, but Hughes shared some advice drawn from his own early experience in a large accounting firm. Hughes had learned that succeeding there could mean competing relentlessly with the people beside you, something that never suited him.
For Hughes, there were more important measures of success.
“In the Northern Neck, number one on the list is having a good reputation. And number two is telling the truth and not being afraid to back up what you say.”
Basye joined the firm on June 1, 1987, and never left.
Although Hughes owned the business, Basye said their relationship never felt much like that of boss and employee. Hughes included him in decisions, shared the benefits of successful years, and trusted him with increasing responsibility.
“I would say I worked with him, not for him, because he never treated me like I wasn’t an equal,” Basye said.
Their partnership developed naturally over the next two decades. When Hughes eventually began thinking about retirement, Basye was the obvious person to continue what had been built.
Around the same time, the firm was outgrowing its Tappahannock office. When Hughes and Basye looked closely at their client base, they realized that roughly 80 to 85 percent of their clients were actually on the Northern Neck side of the river.
They began searching for a location in Warsaw and eventually purchased the former law office of longtime local attorney Charlie Ryland. Basye bought the accounting practice from Hughes, and Hughes & Basye was born. The two continued working together for several more years before Hughes retired at 65.
The transition worked because both men valued continuity. Hughes could have sold the business to an outside firm, but he worried about what that might mean for his employees and clients. Basye understood that he wasn’t simply buying a list of accounts; he was accepting responsibility for relationships that had taken decades to build.
That philosophy continues today through another generation of accountants at Hughes & Basye. Brittney Sgroi, Whitney English, and Madison Pierson are current CPAs, while Nick Basye is currently sitting for the CPA exam. Basye speaks about them much the way Hughes once spoke about him. The firm deliberately keeps an eye out for young people from the area who are studying accounting, inviting some to work during summers and giving them the opportunity to see what a career back home might look like.
Basye recognizes how fortunate the firm has been to have younger professionals prepared to carry it forward, something not every small-town CPA firm has.
“We've just been so blessed,” he said.
That sense of stewardship also shapes the way the firm treats its employees. Tax season can mean extremely long days and weeks for everyone involved. Hughes remembers working 65 to 70 hours a week from January through April during his years in practice. Basye says the hours can be even longer now, particularly for employees balancing demanding work with young families.
For both men, building the right team has always mattered as much as hiring someone with the right credentials. Hughes believed he could often tell within the first 15 minutes of an interview whether someone would fit the firm.
“If you were helpful and you wanted to be a team player, you fit.”
When asked what he enjoyed most about his career, Hughes didn’t mention tax law or financial strategy.
“The thing that I enjoyed the most was a personal relationship with the people that we did work for, because all of them treated me as if I was either a member of the family or a member of that team.”
Even in retirement, former clients still call him occasionally to run an idea by him. He is happy to tell them whether it sounds reasonable—or, in typical Billy Hughes fashion, whether he thinks they are crazy.
Basye has collected quite a few of what he calls “Hughes-isms” through the years, bits of wisdom that tend to make their point with a little humor attached. One he still uses with clients is simple: “Do you know there’s no prize for paying early?”
Another is considerably more colorful: “Don't take such long strides that you rip the inseam of your $50 pants, trying to save your $20 shoes.”
The humor may make the advice memorable, but behind it is a straightforward philosophy: be wise, be fair, and don’t make things more complicated than they need to be.
The same is true of the firm’s approach to accounting. Hughes and Basye are unapologetic about doing things correctly. One prospective client once told Hughes that he had heard the firm tended to “go by the book.”
Hughes’ answer was simple: “Well, what else are you gonna go by?”
That reputation for integrity is something neither man takes lightly. In a close-knit community, they know a business cannot separate its professional reputation from the people behind it.
“The key in the Northern Neck, the one thing that you have got to protect above everything else is your reputation,” Hughes said. “If you lose your reputation in the Northern Neck, you might as well pack up and leave.”
For Hughes and Basye, preserving that reputation means being honest with clients even when the answer isn’t the one they hoped to hear. Their goal, Hughes said, has never been to make decisions for people but “to lead them to make the right decision.”
Outside the office, both men would much rather be outdoors than sitting behind a desk. Hunting and fishing have long been favorite pastimes, and their years together have produced their share of stories. Basye remembers one early turkey hunt when Hughes positioned Basye and his brother Drew in front of him and began calling a turkey toward them. Somehow, the bird bypassed both brothers, circled around and headed directly toward Hughes—who promptly shot it himself.
Even decades later, the story still brings plenty of laughter.
But Hughes and Basye both say their bond is rooted in the Northern Neck, a place they deeply love and where close-knit ties define everyday life. In this community, people know each other, show up when needed, and when someone is in trouble, neighbors are quick to step in without being asked.
And that, perhaps more than any balance sheet, explains what Hughes & Basye has spent nearly five decades building.
The names on the door may have changed through the years, and another generation will eventually carry the firm forward, but the principles have remained remarkably consistent: work hard, tell the truth, take care of your people, and guard the reputation entrusted to you.
It is a legacy Hughes began, Basye has carried forward, and both hope will continue serving the Northern Neck for generations to come.